She was not appeased by it. Her anxiety rather had taken shape, resolving itself into a dreadful suspicion as to the relations between Brodrick and Miss Holland.
He was not thinking of marrying Miss Holland. But there was something between them, something which by no means necessitated her own departure, which indeed rendered superfluous any change in the arrangements she had made so perfect. It was not likely that Brodrick, at his age, should desire to change them. He might be in love with Jane Holland. He was wedded to order and tranquillity and peace. And she never would be. There was wild, queer blood in her. Her writings proved her lawless, defiant, contemptuous of propriety. She had, no doubt, claimed the right of genius to make its own rules.
Gertrude"s brain, which had been pa.s.sive to the situation, now worked with uncontrolled activity. She found herself arguing it out. If it were so, whatever was, or had been, or would be between them, it was transitory. It would run its course and period, and she would remain, and he would return to her. She had only to wait and serve; to serve and wait. It seemed to her then that her pa.s.sion rose above theirs, white with renunciation, a winged prayer, a bloodless, bodiless longing, subtler than desire, sounding a poignant spiritual cry.
And all the time she knew that her suspicion was not justified. Jane Holland was honest; and as for him, she was not even sure that he cared for her.
Every instinct in her was now subdued to the craving to be sure, to know how far the two were going or had gone. Whatever was between them, it was something that Brodrick desired to conceal, to thrust out of her sight, as he had thrust the thing he had held in his hand.
Up-stairs overhead, she heard the door of his room opening and shutting. She saw the light from his windows lengthening on the gravel path outside. He was not coming back.
She opened the drawer where she divined that it lurked hidden, the thing that was the sign and symbol of their secret. She found lying there, face downwards, a portrait of Jane Holland, a photograph of the painting by Gisborne. She took it in her hand and looked at the queer, half-plain, half-beautiful, wholly fascinating face; and it was as if she looked for the first time on the face of her own pa.s.sion, dully, stupidly, not knowing it for the thing it was. She had a sudden vision of their pa.s.sion, Jane"s and Brodrick"s, as it would be; she saw the transitory, incarnate thing, flushed in the splendour of its moment, triumphant, exultant and alive.
She laid the portrait in its drawer again, face downwards, and turned from it. And for a moment she stood there, clutching her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with her hands, so that she hurt them, giving pain for intolerable pain.
x.x.xI
Now that the thing she was afraid of had become a fact, she told herself that she might have known, that she had known it all the time. As she faced it she realized how terribly afraid she had been. She had had foreknowledge of it from the moment when Jane Holland came first into Brodrick"s house.
She maintained her policy of silence. It helped her, as if she felt that, by ignoring this thing, by refusing to talk about it, by not admitting that anything so preposterous could be, it did somehow cease to be.
She would have been glad if Brodrick"s family could have remained unaware of the situation. But Brodrick"s family, by the sheer instinct of self-preservation, was awake to everything that concerned it.
Every Brodrick, once he had pa.s.sed the privileged years of his minority, knew that grave things were expected of him. It was expected of him, first of all, that he should marry; and that, not with the levity of infatuation, but soberly and seriously, for the good and for the preservation of the race of Brodricks in its perfection. As it happened, in the present generation of Brodricks, not one of them had done what was expected of them, except Sophy. John had fallen in love with a fragile, distinguished lady, and had incontinently married her; and she had borne him no children. Henry, who should have known better, had fallen in love with a lady so excessively fragile that she had died before he could marry her at all. And because of his love for her he had remained unmarried. Frances had set her heart on a rascal who had left her for the governess. And now Hugh, with his Jane Holland, bid fair to be similarly perverse.
For every Brodrick took, not delight, so much as a serious and sober satisfaction, in the thought that he disappointed expectation. Each one believed himself the creature of a solitary and majestic law. His actions defied prediction. He felt it as an impertinence that anybody, even a Brodrick, should presume to conjecture how a Brodrick would, in any given circ.u.mstances, behave. He held it a special prerogative of Brodricks, this capacity for accomplishing the unforeseen. n.o.body was surprised when the unforeseen happened; for this family made it a point of honour never to be surprised. The performances of other people, however astounding, however eccentric, appeared to a Brodrick as the facilely calculable working of a law from which a Brodrick was exempt.
Whatever another person did, it was always what some Brodrick had expected him to do. Even when Frances"s husband ran away with the governess and broke the heart Frances had set on him, it was only what John and Henry and Sophy and Hugh had known would happen if she married him. If it hadn"t happened to a Brodrick, they would hardly have blamed Heron for his iniquity; it was so inherent in him and predestined.
So, when it seemed likely that Hugh would marry Jane Holland, the Brodricks were careful to conceal from each other that they were unprepared for this event. They discussed it casually, and with less emotion than they had given to the wild project of the magazine.
It was on a Sunday evening at the John Brodricks", shortly after Jane had left Putney.
"It strikes me," said John who began it, "that one way or another Hugh is seeing a great deal of Miss Holland."
"My dear John, why shouldn"t he?" said Frances Heron.
"I"m not saying that he shouldn"t. I"m saying that one way or another, he does."
"He has to see her on business," said Frances.
"_Does_ he see her on business?" inquired John.
"He says he does," said Frances.
"Of course," said the Doctor, "he"d _say_ he did."
"Why," said Sophy, "does he say anything at all? That"s the suspicious circ.u.mstance, to my mind."
"He"s evidently aware," said the Doctor, "that something wants explaining."
"So it does," said Sophy; "when Hugh takes to seeing any woman more than once in five months."
"But she"s the last woman he"d think of," said Frances.
"It"s the last woman a man thinks of that he generally ends by marrying," said John.
"If he"d only think of her," said the Doctor, "he"d be safe enough."
"I know. It"s his not thinking," said John; "it"s his dashing into it with his eyes shut."
"Do you think," said Frances, "we"d better open his eyes?"
"If you do that," said Levine, "he"ll marry her to-morrow."
"Yes," said the Doctor; "much better encourage him, give him his head."
"And fling her at it?" suggested Sophy.
"Well, certainly, if we don"t want it to happen, we"d better a.s.sume that it will happen."
"Supposing," said Frances presently, "it did happen--what then?"
"My dear Frances, it would be most undesirable," said John.
"By all means," said Levine, "let us take the worst for granted. Then possibly he"ll think better of it."
The family, therefore, adopted its characteristic policy of a.s.suming Hugh"s intentions to be obvious, of refusing to be surprised or even greatly interested.
Only the Doctor, watching quietly, waited for his moment. It came the next evening when he dropped in to dine with Hugh. He turned the conversation upon Jane Holland, upon her illness, upon its cause and her recovery.
"I shouldn"t be surprised," said he, "if some time or other she was to have a bad nervous break-down."
Hugh laughed. "My dear Henry, you wouldn"t be surprised if everybody had a bad nervous break-down. It"s what you"re always expecting them to have."
Henry said he _did_ expect it in women of Miss Holland"s physique, who habitually over-drive their brains beyond the power of their body. He became excessively professional as he delivered himself on this head.
It was his subject. He was permitted to enlarge upon it from time to time, and Hugh was not in the least surprised at his entering on it now.
It was what he had expected of Henry, and he said so.
Henry looked steadily at his brother.
"I have had her," said he, "under very close observation."
"So have I," said Hugh. "You forget that she is an exceptional woman."